We try finding some objective reality in our subjective experience, so how far have we really come?

Consider the issue of time.

As these mobile organisms, this sentient interface between body and world functions as a sequence of perceptions, in order to navigate, so our experience of time is as the point of the present, moving past to future. Physics codifies it as measures of duration, correlates them with measures of distance and calls the relationship "spacetime."

The evident reality is that change is turning future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns. Duration is the present, as the events form and dissolve.

There is no dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, to inform and drive it. Causality and conservation of energy. Cause becomes effect.

Different clocks can run at different rates simply because they are separate actions. Think metabolism.

That culture is about synchronizing people into a larger social organism, using the same rules, beliefs, measures, it might seem there is some universal, Newtonian flow of time, but it's rabbit time, turtle time and the turtle is still plodding along, long after the rabbit has died.

Nature is so diverse and so integrated, because everything doesn't march to the beat of the same drummer.

Time is asymmetric, because it is a measure of action and action is inertial. The earth only turns one direction.

That different events will appear in different order from different locations is no more consequential than seeing the moon as it was a moment ago, simultaneous with seeing stars as they were years ago. It's the energy that's conserved, not the information being generated. That the information changes is time.

Energy is "conserved," because it manifests this presence, creating time, as well as temperature, pressure, color and sound. Time is frequency, events are amplitude.

Ideal gas laws correlate volume with temperature and pressure, but we don't refer to them as projections of space, even though they are as foundational to our emotions and bodily functions, as sequence is to thought.

Energy goes past to future, because the patterns it is generating rise and fall, future to past. Energy drives the wave, while the fluctuations rise and fall. No tiny strings necessary.

Consciousness also goes past to future, while the perceptions, emotions and thoughts giving it form and substance. Though it is the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems processing the energy and feeding the flame, while the central nervous system sorts the information, signals from the noise.

Logic is the clock and ruler, while emotions are the thermostat and barometer.

So there is an intellectual tendency to construct our physical theories around the information extracted, but the results seem far more slippery than we desire.

Galaxies are energy radiating out, as structure coalesces in. Entropy for the energy is to expand, while entropy for the information is to contract. Black holes to black body radiation.

Synchronization versus harmonization. Nodes and networks, organisms and ecosystems, particles and fields.